Iran's Achmadinejad And Our George W. Bush

Ted Koppel recently reports something from his visit to Iran that I have long suspected to be true. The core supporters of Iranian president Mahmoud Achmadinejad are basically the same as Bush's core supporters here in the USA. The main and only difference is the brand of their religion.

Koppel reports Mahmoud's support is strongest amongst the poorest who also tend to be the most religious and the least well informed. As Ted interviewed himself up the Iranian socio-economic ladder, support for Mahmoud dwindled in direct proportion to ladder rung. In Iran, a religious zealot has been propelled to power by appealing to the religious masses and by scaring them with warnings of the Enemy from the West (us) out to kill them because of their religion and for their oil.

In the USA we have a religious zealot propelled to power by appealing to the most religious amongst us with vague promises of restoring christianity to governance, his supposed support of passing new religious based national laws, and by frightening our masses with visions of Islamic murderers bent on our destruction just beacause we love freedom and they don't.

In both cases it required a base of particularly poorly informed voters filled with religious devotions to elect either man to power. Both men remain in power only due to the to the mutual distrust, suspicions, and fear of the other they work to their favor at home.

And if I skip the Bush supporters here motivated by the money they believed they stood to gain from a Bush presidency, it is only because they alone could never have elected Bush. It took religious zealots here for the Bush fiasco to get rolling.

So, as I long suspected and as Ted Koppel confirms, Bush and Achmadinejad owe a lot to one another and should some day be close buddies.